


Running away from the Ouroboros

by Sullen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, And Mommy Issues, Angst, Avengers Family, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Tony Stark, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sad with a Happy Ending, Some Humor, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tags to be added, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues, i think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23698903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sullen/pseuds/Sullen
Summary: Tony was pregnant in Bucharest, in Leipzig, in Siberia.“You can’t keep me away from my own kid.” Steve says, his jaw clenched in the righteousness of his cause.“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Tony says calmly.“I’m not the only one who made mistakes, Tony.”“You say that as if it should wash away yours. Actions have consequences darling.”“And when she asks about me? What are you going to do then?”“You leave that to me.” Tony’s calm and firm tone infuriates Steve. He can see it. It’s not nice is it, to be on the other side of that wall? That indifference? When nothing you say seems to matter?“I know my rights.” Steve says. “I’ll go to court if I have to. Don’t let it come to that, Tony. Please.”The words piss off Tony. Oh, not the part about going to court, he expected that. But the pleading and the ‘don’t let it come to that’. Where was this attitude during the accords? Where was the respect for legal avenues in Bucharest?”
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 18
Kudos: 187





	Running away from the Ouroboros

He reads the letter and throws up. 

As he wipes his face, he’s already composing comebacks in his head. Your letter was so bullshit it made me throw up a little bit in my mouth, only it wasn’t a little bit. 

The medicine cabinet is in the bathroom. He eyes the suppressants. He’ll have to get new ones. Steve liked his heats, liked having him during his heats, so he hadn’t taken his meds in a while. Now that he didn’t have an alpha he’d have to take care those pesky heats didn’t come- oh no. 

No no no. 

Stammering, he asks Fri for his next estimated heat date. It was last week. 

No way. 

He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t even tell Rhodey. 

What’s the point? There’s no way-

Tony remembers the viciousness of the Siberia fight. He remembers the cars Wanda sent tumbling on his head. The other hits he took in the airport. He remembers Barnes punch the lights out of him, the black eye, the backhand, the fall. He remembers the stress. 

There’s no way. 

So he doesn’t tell anyone. He’s a little extra careful. He doesn’t lift heavy things. He doesn’t take any meds except some safe pain pills. He’s careful about the food he eats. He tries to remain calm. He stops drinking. 

He expects to wake up to bloody sheets. Any day now. 

_Annnyyy dayyy._

He had, a month two months ago, some constipation, and indigestion. He’d felt tired. So tired. He thought it was the accords. Then the indigestion hit, and joint pain. He’d been so irritable, thinking it was age catching up to him. He’d even snapped at Steve a couple of times. It was like he couldn’t bear his own alpha suddenly.

He has to attend accord meetings and it’s difficult. Difficult to answer their questions on where his former teammates are. Difficult to push his amendments in. Difficult to handle the whole thing by himself. It’s compounded by wanting to pee every half hour when those things last _hours._

He works on the leg braces. He consults doctors, neurologists, Cho. 

He works with Pepper, SI needs his attention too.

He goes to his parents grave and brings a large floral arrangement. The grave, they’re buried together, is nice. Upkeep is being done. Standing there, hands in his pockets and the wind making his jacket flap, he feels very alive, and very lonely. There’s the smell of dozens and dozens of cut flowers in the air. It makes his nose twitch. He wonders what Steve is doing at the moment. 

A couple of days later, during his bath, he’s washing his legs, when he notices the veins are showing through his skin. He’s normally too dark for that.

The days are busy. The nights are shameful. He’s jittery, not enough coffee. No nightcap. He’d gone through Steve’s room, the one he kept separate for himself citing he hated to sleep alone in their bed when Tony wasn’t there. He goes through the laundry bin and takes out all the dirty clothes. The smell is strongest on them. There’s a couple other clothes scattered on various surfaces. Plus the clean laundered clothes. Tony takes them all. He stuffs a shirt under the pillow. Pulls on a T-shirt of Steve’s. Tony keens with the pain, the _wanting_. 

Halfway through a video call concerning the accords he excuses himself. His bladder is going to burst. He goes to the toilet and there’s blood on his underwear. It’s not a lot. But it’s there. 

Numb, he goes back to the meeting. Silently, he places a medical team on alert. He finishes the meeting in less than an hour and clucks his tongue in disgust when he realises he didn’t change his underwear. The med team is getting antsy. 

He gets a call from Pepper, she’s interested in the braces he’s making for Rhodey. Can they open a new line for SI? Prosthetics? They already have one, of course, but it’s not as big as the both of them would wish. There’s not a lot of money in it. Not if you want them to reach the people who need it. Pepper has some interesting ideas for expansion, which include buying an insurance company. He hangs up, chuckling. He thinks of the tv pundits who mocked her when he promoted her to CEO. He looks at at the time and realises he and Pep had talked for hours. He goes and checks. No more blood. 

Okay. 

He spends a restless night. He dreams of Leipzig airport. He wakes with a start after dreaming of falling in Rhodey’s place. Another time, he races to the quinjet and Nat’s there. He’s relieved, until she electrocutes him. He’s in a cell, and all the avengers take turns spitting on him, yelling at him. He struggles against their vitriol and realises he’s in a straightjacket. He wakes up, tries to go back to sleep. Back in the cell. Captain America’s here to break everyone out. Steve opens every door except his. After that, Tony give up. He takes a Starktab and works. Halfway through he falls asleep. The dreams turn weirder, in the way dreams too. He jerks awake and his thighs and hips and crotch are wet. 

Oh.

He puts his hands down rubs his fingertips across and then checks. No blood. He tries again. He checks the bedding. Nothing. He pulls down his pants. 

It was only sweat.

A month passes. Menopause crosses his mind. Yeah, that would make sense. 

He’s disapp- relieved. He’s relieved. 

But he keeps throwing up. 

Cancer? Tumor?

Sure, a tumor that you dress up and love and take to play dates with other tumors. Some acerbic doctor had once described it like that to Tony at a party. 

He gains weight. 

One day he’s in front of the mirror and it’s a slight struggle to button up his pants. The belt won’t fit in the regular hole. He looks in the mirror. His clothes are snug on him. But then, he always wore fitted clothes, any variation threw them off.

These are formal clothes that he hasn’t worn in a while. That day he wears them because he has a meeting at SI. Rhodes make a crack about his weight. Tells him to join him the gym. 

Happy meets him at SI. He tells him he’s gained weight too and does he want to go a couple rounds in the boxing ring? 

Suffice to say that Tony’s feeling very attacked. It’s not weight, it’s-

(another person)

It’s nothing. 

He promises Happy to lay off the pizza. 

Yeah, sure, over his dead body. 

There’s a meme that goes, _my alpha may have left me but I still have pizza._

He finishes the meeting and goes back to the compound. 

On the way he nearly stops at a pharmacy.

He starts taking multivitamins. And B12. Folic acid. Just cause he’s feeling under the weather. Not because of...

He wears sweats and some of the oversized shirts that he has. He cycles through them. He wears oversized hoodies when it gets slightly cold as an excuse. He doesn’t buy new clothes. It’s a waste of money. 

Vision, at least, is too polite to comment on his body. If he even notices. 

The papers start reporting on his weight gain. It’s a nightmare. The tabloids take the lead. Then the respectable newspapers start putting it in their gossip pages. Late night talk show hosts debate what word should be the opposite of a revenge bod. 

Tony keeps hoping it’ll go away, but it gains leverage. ‘Experts’ are brought in to talk about the effect that an alpha leaving has upon the left behind omega. It’s all very _I have sympathy for Mr Stark and it’s very difficult in situations like this and but he has to take care of himself and if I was his doctor I would recommend and depression and abandonment blah blah blah._

There are cartoons drawn of an rotund Iron Man. Jokes made about him eating his feelings. Every time he steps out, and he goes out only for SI work, there are paparazzi taking photos. It feeling like the 90s all over again. More serious pieces come out, questioning the effect a broken alpha-omega pair has upon the couple. They speculate Steve’s condition. They talk about the effect the serum has on the bond. Does it make it better for Captain America or worse? What about Stark? Who has it worse? A war rages on Twitter. People condemn the coverage of speculating on an omega’s weight. Other people counter that he’s Iron Man and can he really do his job if he’s fat?

And if there weren’t enough photographs of him in tighter and tighter formal clothes, some dick gets a shot of Tony in his sweats. He’d been avoiding the gym, and Rhodey had not pressed the issue too much. He still needed exercise so he’d been taking walks around the compound ground. The paparazzo comes prepared with a long lens and happily snaps away. 

When the pictures get published, it causes a furor. SI stock actually loses points on the stock market. Which is so funny and absurd and ludicrous that Tony can’t even...

His formal clothes had actually hidden most of the weight gain. The jacket covered the bulk nicely. In his sweats he looks- bigger. And he actually has gained weight. He doesn’t go to the gym and hasn’t stepped in a boxing ring. He doesn’t even practice Wing Chun anymore. He sits on his ass most of the day. And he’s eating three regular meals with snacks in the middle if he feels like it.

So the extra weight hides very nicely the fact that most of his bulk is...in the middle. 

Rhodes and Pepper are concerned and Tony brushes them off. He tells them he doesn’t care what the rags publish. He’s fine. He does feel a flush rise on his face when he thinks of his former teammates reading the papers and seeing his pictures. Would they laugh at his? Natasha wouldn’t laugh, no, she’d raise a perfect eyebrow with a tiny smile on her face maybe. Clint _would_ laugh. What would Steve say? Would they joke that he left at the right time? There’s one tweet going around that jokes Captain America saw the writing on the wall and ran because he was getting fat. He grits his teeth at the thought of them making assumptions. 

He’s Iron Man for fucks sake. 

Tony deploys drones around the compound so even the longest range cameras can’t get a shot at him again. But he can’t remain in the compound forever.

But anvil has to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this is going, only that I’m going crazy in lockdown. Please comment and talk to me, to stop me going batshit. 
> 
> (hah, batshit, get it??)
> 
> If there’s anything you wanna see in this fic or have any prompts, please throw them my way. Can’t guarantee it’ll happen cause inspiration is fickle but I’ll try.
> 
> And how great is the new change ao3 pushed today huh??? Click on the chapter number under the summary and it’ll take you to the last chapter! I’ve wanted it for ages!!!<3
> 
> Concrit is fine, unbetaed.
> 
> Tumblr name is sullen-defiance.


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